"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 005 - Pirate of the Pacific" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

jumped to another, a third, a fourth.

All were unconscious!

With mad haste, Liang-Sun shucked the rug off the head and shoulders of the man he had cut in two.

Liang-Sun's squawl of horrified surprise was like that of a cat with its tail stepped on.

The body in the rug was one of his own men!

Terror laid hold of Liang-Sun, a fright such as he had never before experienced. He dashed headlong out
into the court.

"The bronze man is a devil!" he shrilled. "Flee, my sons!"

The Orientals who had been on guard outside, needed no urging. They battled each other to be first
across the drawbridge and into their cars. They had their fill of fighting the bronze giant.
They departed without knowing what had made their fellows unconscious. A close inspection of the
room where the men slept would have shown the remains of many thin-walled glass balls. Perhaps they
might have guessed these had originally contained an anaesthetic gas which made men unconscious the
instant they breathed it, yet which became harmless after it had been in the air two or three minutes.

These anaesthetic globes were Doc's invention. He always carried a supply with him.

Cars bearing the fleeing Mongols were not out of earshot when Doc arose from the concealment of a
divan not six feet from the phone over which Liang-Sun had talked to his chief.

Doc had heard that conversation.

Doc's escape from the tightly chained rug, so mystifying to Liang-Sun, had not been difficult. Doc had
employed a simple trick used by escape artists. He had tensed all his muscles when the rug was being
tied. Relaxing later, he had plenty of room to crawl out after he had reduced the guards to
unconsciousness with the anaesthetic.

Doc had not been affected by the anaesthetic for the simple reason that he could hold his breath during
the two or three minutes it was effective.

He sped out of the castle, with the idea of following Liang-Sun and the others. But they had stolen his
gray roadster.

Doc ran for the nearest boulevard. It was a quarter of a mile distant. Had official timers held stop
watches on that quarter, the time Doc did it in would have been good for a headline on any sport page in
the country. But the only observer was a stray dog which sought to overhaul the bronze man.

On the boulevard, Doc hailed a taxi.

Chapter 5. THE DRAGON TRAIL
THE cab let Doc Savage out before an uptown New York police station. He entered. The marked
deference of the cops, the celerity with which they sprang to grant his wishes, showed they knew him as
a person of power. The police commissioner himself would not have gotten better service.